5 thoughts on “CHRISTIAN BIGOTRY: “Would You Say This Man Is Lashing Out At Folks For Being Religious?” / CO State Senator Pat Steadman (D)”

1. The connections between headlines and content are often tenuous, like the carnival barker calling you into the tent to see the strange monstrosity, which is seldom as monstrous as his appeals suggest. That said, Steadman is intentionally provocative. By alluding to separate water fountains he is intentionally and dramatically linking critics of same-sex marriage to the attitudes and reasoning that once sustained Jim Crow, segregation, and apartheid. It is, as such, a stinging rebuke. At the same time, is it really untrue? Racial segregation was once heartily defended by conservative Christians and attacked by liberal Christians. The liberal Christians did not, however, take up the charge in their scripture to become radical and thus they became a passive and dwindling lot. Christianity-wise, we are left now with too many of their opposite number who hew, ironically, more to the so-called Old Testament… over which they once said the New Testament had negated. Time, however, is not on their side. Just as most Americans now see the error of slavery and segregation, those who today advocate intolerance in the name of their religion someday will be seen as representing just another iteration of the human tendency toward intolerance made more trenchant by the lesser angels of their religion.

   Reply ↓

   • It’s possible that some of the “new” Christians have got around to reading a bit more of their manual. Matthew 5:17 reads: ‘“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them’. Now I know that can probably be twisted into all sorts of meanings by all sorts of preachers for their own ends but a plain reading says to me that the whole of the Old Testament is in play.

     I just feel so sorry that so many simply cannot understand that the Bible is just myth and legend, based on very early polytheistic religions’ stories, passed down by word of mouth, and that the New Testament was not even written down until decades to centuries after the supposed events. Add to that the numerous different versions of the same stories and the translations of translations and the human decisions of what to include in or exclude from the final cut and you’re left with, well, just a book of fiction based on the bigotry, intolerance and racism prevalent in those past times. Mind you, that goes for Qur’an and many other religions’ “holy” books as well.

     Reply ↓

     • Exactly. A fair reading of Matthew is that the NT Jesus does not object to Mosaic law itself but objects to it when it displaces ‘love’ as the guiding force and laws and proscriptions become ends unto themselves and, not incidentally, serve to reinforce the authority of church and other social leaders. That’s why Matthew’s Jesus is really a radical figure and why his radicality may have sealed his fate.

2. He does seem to be a trifle upset about something, yes!

   Reply ↓

3. This gentleman is clearly not “lashing out at folks for being religious”, he is lashing out at those folks who are bigoted homophobes because a truly horrible, hate-filled, bigoted work of fiction, the Bible, tells them to be bigoted.

   Religions indoctrinate people, preferably extremely young people, to believe perverse ideas that are both damaging and sectarian. They teach that their superstition-based, supernatural and, of course, invisible and unprovable deity (or deities) is/are the one and only truth and everyone who opposes their teachings is a sinner who will burn in hell for eternity. Instilling fear and exerting control over their followers are religions’ primary business objectives; rope them in and they will pay large sums of money to be “saved”.

   Obviously, the only actual proof for the existence of the Christian god and its Jesus character is a book written decades to centuries after the alleged events and not a single author ever met any of the featured characters. There is exactly the same level of proof for the existence of a god and Jesus in the Bible as there is proof for the existence of Batman and Robin in DC Comics.

   To attempt to control the lives of others based solely on abstract, irrational beliefs in the supernatural, for which not a shred or scintilla of empirical, scientific evidence exists, is outrageous. What there is clear evidence for is that two human beings can be in love and manifest that love in a ceremony we call marriage. There can be no rational objection to such marriages, irrespective of whether the couple are of the same or different gender.

   Reply ↓

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.